Extant theoretical work on the political resource curse implies that dependence on resource revenues should decrease autocracies’ likelihood of democratizing but not necessarily affect democracies’ chances of survival. Yet most previous empirical studies estimate models that are ill-suited to address this claim. We improve upon earlier studies, estimating a dynamic logit model that interacts a continuous measure of resource dependence with an indicator of regime type using data from 166 countries, covering the period from 1816-2006. We find that an increase (...) in resource dependence at time t - 1 increases the likelihood of autocratic persistence at t, but has no appreciable effect on democratic survival. We go beyond existing empirical studies to show that increases in resource dependence have persistent and substantial cumulative effects on autocracies' likelihood of becoming democratic over the long-term, showing that the total effect of resource dependence on regime type is much larger than the short-term (one period) effect indicates. (shrink)

Some common explanations of issue polarization and echo chambers rely on social or cognitive mechanisms of exclusion. Accordingly, suggested interventions like “be more open-minded” target these mechanisms: avoid epistemic bubbles and don’t discount contrary information. Contrary to such explanations, we show how a much weaker mechanism—the preference for belief—can produce issue polarization in epistemic communities with little to no mechanisms of exclusion. We present a network model that demonstrates how a dynamic interaction between the preference for belief and common structures (...) of epistemic communities can turn very small unequal distributions of initial beliefs into full-blown polarization. This points to a different class of explanations, one that emphasizes the importance of the initial spread of information. We also show how our model complements extant explanations by including a version of biased assimilation and motivated reasoning—cognitive mechanisms of exclusion. We find that mechanisms of exclusion can exacerbate issue polarization, but may not be the ultimate root of it. Hence, the recommended interventions suggested by extant literature is expected to be limited and the problem of issue polarization to be even more intractable. (shrink)

As the author has previously argued, a statement of form “Y is X” can often be taken as hyperbolic for a notably high degree of likeness between Y and X, or, instead, as hyperbolically stating how important Y is as a part of X. The present article goes further and argues that these types of hyperbole, as well as various others, are just special cases of reflexive hyperbole, a style that appears not previously to have been explored in its own (...) right. The article therefore serves to introduce this style and to unify under it various more specific, disparate-seeming types of hyperbole, revealing their deep similarity. They all rest in a uniform way on a special property that some relationships have, namely of being reflexive in a broadened sense. The relationship of likeness is reflexive in the standard sense that any entity bears the relationship to itself with maximum possible strength. But some other relationships of interest in this article are only reflexive in a broader way that relaxes these universality and maximality requirements to an extent. The article also explains how reflexive hyperbole about likeness is a novel addition to the theory of metaphor, involving a distinctive interpretative process with special effects, and how reflexive hyperbole about part importance is not reducible to whole-for-part metonymy, because the latter does not systematically access sufficiently important parts. In addition, the article briefly considers the defaultness or otherwise of reflexive hyperbolic interpretations. (shrink)

We consider the varieties and directions of influence that the source and target domains involved in a conceptual metaphor can have on each other during the course of understanding metaphorical utterances based on the metaphor. Previous studies have been restricted both as to direction of influence and as to type of influence. They have been largely confined to the “forward” (source to target) direction of influence, and they have concentrated on the transfer of features or propositions and (to some extent) (...) the highlighting of aspects of a domain. By contrast, this article stresses the importance both of other varieties of influence (e.g., transfer of queries and uncertainty effects) and of “reverse” influence (target to source). We seek to curb the natural tendency to think that, because metaphor involves an overall move from source to target, therefore all inter-domain influences in the course of understanding go in that direction. The bulk of the article explores the theoretical issues involved. These issues have arisen out of a reasoning-based approach to metaphor, seeking to make best use of information from metaphorical utterance, context, source and target domains, and known metaphorical mappings, by applying a complex overall reasoning process. The article briefly explains the thorough implementation of reverse influence in a computer program for metaphorical reasoning called ATT-Meta, although the theoretical considerations are relevant to all disciplines concerned with metaphor. We make some suggestions for further computational and psychological research on metaphor. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to bring out, by means of a simple thought experiment involving demonstratives, a discrepancy between what is expressed and what is believed, and to consider some consequences of this - most notably, whether we might hold, for example, that the ancients never believed that Hesperus is not Phosphorus. RESUMO O objetivo deste artigo é apresentar, por meio de um experimento mental simples envolvendo demonstrativos, uma discrepância entre o que é expresso e o que (...) se acredita, e considerar algumas consequências disso - principalmente se podemos sustentar, por exemplo, que os antigos nunca acreditaram que Hesperus não é Phosphorus. (shrink)

Burke suggests that we should view society as a partnership between the past, the present, and the future. I defend this idea by outlining how we can understand the interests of the past and future people and the obligations that they have towards each other. I argue that we have forward-looking obligations to leave the world a decent place, and backward-looking obligations to respect the legacy of the past. The latter obligation requires an understanding of the role that traditions and (...) meta-traditions should (and should not) play in tying together societies—especially national societies—over time. (shrink)

When comparing alternative courses of action, modern military decision makers often must consider both the military effectiveness and the ethical consequences of the available alternatives. The basis, design, calibration, and performance of a principles-based computational model of ethical considerations in military decision making are reported in this article. The relative ethical violation (REV) model comparatively evaluates alternative military actions based upon the degree to which they violate contextually relevant ethical principles. It is based on a set of specific ethical principles (...) deemed by philosophers and ethicists to be relevant to military courses of action. A survey of expert and non-expert human decision makers regarding the relative ethical violation of alternative actions for a set of specially designed calibration scenarios was conducted to collect data that was used to calibrate the REV model. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the survey showed that people, even experts, disagreed greatly amongst themselves regarding the scenarios’ ethical considerations. Despite this disagreement, two significant results emerged. First, after calibration the REV model performed very well in terms of replicating the ethical assessments of human experts for the calibration scenarios. The REV model outperformed an earlier model that was based on tangible consequences rather than ethical principles, that earlier model performed comparably to human experts, the experts outperformed human non-experts, and the non-experts outperformed random selection of actions. All of these performance comparisons were measured quantitatively and confirmed with suitable statistical tests. Second, although humans tended to value some principles over others, none of the ethical principles involved—even the principle of not harming civilians—completely overshadowed all of the other principles. (shrink)

The intuitive view that memories are characterized by a feeling of pastness, perceptions by a feeling of presence, while imagination lacks either faces challenges from two sides. Some researchers complain that the “feeling of pastness” is either unclear, irrelevant or isn’t a real feature. Others point out that there are cases of memory without the feeling of pastness, perception without presence, and other cross-cutting cases. Here we argue that the feeling of pastness is indeed a real, useful feature, and although (...) this feeling does not define memory ontologically, it is a characteristic marker which helps us easily categorise a mental state first-personally. We outline several cognitive features that underlie this experience, including the feeling of past accessibility, ergonomic significance, immersion, objectivity and mental strength. Our account is distinctly phenomenal, rather than doxastic, although our web of beliefs may contribute to this experience. (shrink)

The viability of a naïve realist theory of memory was a lively debate for philosophers of mind in the first half of the twentieth century. More recently, though, naïve realism has been largely abandoned as a non-starter in the memory literature, with representationalism being the standard view held by philosophers of memory. But rather than being carefully argued, the dismissal of naïve realism is an assumption that sits at the back of much recent theorizing in the philosophy of memory. In (...) this paper, we identify three reasons why philosophers of memory have felt compelled to outright reject naïve realism. We argue that none of those reasons are successful. Thus, far from being a non-starter, we argue that naïve realism is a theoretical perspective that needs to be given serious consideration in current philosophy of memory debates. (shrink)

The correlation between dialogue and religion, both as conceptual apparatuses and as current practices, has had a long history. The purpose of this essay is to isolate one such instance – the “critical dialogue” taking place amongst scholars of religions – which involves also the dialogue scholars establish with their field of study and/or a given religious tradition. Following a brief clarification of terminology used, I will proceed to discuss concrete examples of critical dialogue within the Study of Religions and (...) how this might be enhanced. Finally, I will draw some partial conclusions which might pave the way for this critical dialogue to improve and continue. (shrink)

The differences between the theories of hearing held by Aristotle and by Alexander of Aphrodisias are explored. Alexander appears to have a more systematic approach which avoids the dilemma faced by Aristotle in deciding whether the hearing process constitutes a time-taking kinesis or an instantaneous energeia.

The levels of selection debate is generally taken to be a debate about how natural selection can occur at the various levels of biological organization. In this paper, we argue that questions about levels of selection should be analyzed separately from questions about levels of organization. In the deflationary proposal we defend, all that is necessary for multilevel selection is that there are cases in which particles are nested in collectives, and that both the collectives and the particles that compose (...) them each separately undergo natural selection. We argue that adopting this deflationary account helps to disentangle the levels of selection and the levels of organization, and thereby contributes to advancing the levels of selection debate. (shrink)

Modern information communication technology eradicates barriers of geographic distances, making the world globally interdependent, but this spatial globalization has not eliminated cultural fragmentation. The Two Cultures of C.P. Snow (that of science– technology and that of humanities) are dri6ing apart even faster than before, and they themselves crumble into increasingly specialized domains. Disintegrated knowledge has become subservient to the competition in technological and economic race leading in the direction chosen not by the reason, intellect, and shared value-based judgement, but rather (...) by the whims of autocratic leaders or fashion controlled by marketers for the purposes of political or economic dominance. If we want to restore the authority of our best available knowledge and democratic values in guiding humanity, first we have to reintegrate scattered domains of human knowledge and values and offer an evolving and diverse vision of common reality unified by sound methodology. This collection of articles responds to the call from the journal Philosophies to build a new, networked world of knowledge with domain specialists from different disciplines interacting and connecting with other knowledge-and-values-producing and knowledge-and-values- consuming communities in an inclusive, extended, contemporary natural–philosophic manner. In this process of synthesis, scientific and philosophical investigations enrich each other—with sciences informing philosophies about the best current knowledge of the world, both natural and human-made—while philosophies scrutinize the ontological, epistemological, and methodological foundations of sciences, providing scientists with questions and conceptual analyses. This is all directed at extending and deepening our existing comprehension of the world, including ourselves, both as humans and as societies, and humankind. -/- Print copies (17. (shrink)

Bok defines lying in the same way as Augustine and Kant. But she wants to oppose their position that one cannot lie to save an innocent life. This position was successfully and consistently opposed by Constant and Grotius who did so by redefining lying so that the untruth one tells to save an innocent life does not count as a lie since it does not violate a right. Bok refuses to use this way. She instead uses her analogy of deception (...) and violence. But this analogy is not, as she believes it is, intuitively clear or a good a fortiori argument. Still, if one pays attention to the ordinary sense of the words Bok uses in her confused analogy, deception and lying, force and violence, one realizes that Bok's analogy has some persuasive power, not because violence and lying are right means to save a life, but because force and deception, or force or deception are. And to see why this is so requires that Constant and Grotius's way of opposing Kant, and their definition of lying, must be adopted. Bok's apparent success with her analogy of force and lying is due to the fact that it is a shadow of the more genuine success of the analogy of force and violence and deception and lying which requires Constant and Grotius's definition of deception and lying. Thus her way of opposing Augustine and Kant is weak in trying to do it in a new approach and demonstrates the advantages of Constant and Grotius's approach. (shrink)

The official definition of ‘pain’ by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) hasn’t seen much revision since its publication in 1979. There have been various criticisms of the definition in the literature from different quarters: that the definition implies a dubious metaphysical dualism, that it requires a strong form of consciousness as well as linguistic abilities, that it excludes many vulnerable groups that are otherwise perfectly capable of experiencing pain, that it has therefore unacceptable practical as well (...) as ethical consequences, that it is unhelpful to the health-care professional as an operational definition, that it is too narrow, and many others. In my view, most of these criticisms depend on misunderstandings or on uncharitable interpretations. My aim is to go over the definition, clarify some potential ambiguities, and argue that these criticisms don’t cut much ice. At the end, I will present a few slightly reworded versions of the definition that I claim are more felicitous and capture the original intended meaning by the members of the taxonomic committee in a much better and transparent way that avoids all the major extant criticisms in the literature. (Written for interdisciplinary audiences.). (shrink)

Logical pluralism is the view that there is more than one logic. Logical normativism is the view that logic is normative. These positions have often been assumed to go hand-in-hand, but we show that one can be a logical pluralist without being a logical normativist. We begin by arguing directly against logical normativism. Then we reformulate one popular version of pluralism—due to Beall and Restall—to avoid a normativist commitment. We give three non-normativist pluralist views, the most promising of which depends (...) not on logic’s normativity but on epistemic goals. (shrink)

This paper contributes to the growing literature in social epistemology of diagnosing the epistemically problematic features of fake news. I identify two novel problems: the problem of relevant alternatives; and the problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment. The former arises among individual epistemic transactions. By making salient, and thereby relevant, alternatives to knowledge claims, fake news stories threaten knowledge. The problem of the degradation of the epistemic environment arises at the level of entire epistemic communities. I introduce the (...) notion of an epistemic environment, roughly the totality of resources and circumstances relevant to assessing the epistemically interesting statuses, such as knowledge. Fake news degrades our epistemic environment by undermining confidence in epistemic institutions and altering epistemic habits, thereby making the environment less conducive to achieving positive epistemic statuses. This is problematic even if the decrease in confidence and the altering of habits are rational. I end by considering solutions to these problems, stressing the importance of reproaching each other for proliferating fake news. I argue that we should reproach even faultless purveyors of fake news. This is because fake news typically arises in abnormal epistemic contexts, where there is widespread ignorance of, and noncompliance with, correct epistemic norms. (shrink)

It is often assumed that all lucky events are significant. The thought is that a chancy event such as winning the lottery is lucky for you in part because it affects your interests or well-being. But whether you win an Absurdist Raffle in which there are no prizes, is, intuitively, not a matter of luck. This is because this event—even if chancy—is not significant for any subject. However, a few philosophers have recently claimed not only that luck does not necessarily (...) involve a significance condition but that we should not view luck involving claims in terms of significance. After reviewing the literature on this topic, I argue that lucky events are significant. A significance condition is necessary to distinguish between different kinds of luck: practical, epistemic, and moral. All lucky events are significant and chancy, but they can be significant for subjects in different ways. For example, an event is epistemically lucky for you if it is epistemically significant and chancy, but such events need not affect your practical interests or moral standing. Furthermore, I argue that events that are chancy but not significant should be thought of in terms of chance and not luck. (shrink)

Under which conditions are we epistemically justied to believe that what other people tell us is true? Traditionally, the answer has either been reductionist or anti-reductionist: Either our justication reduces to non-testimonial reasons, or we have a presumptive, though defeasible, right to believe what we are told. However, different cases pull in different directions. Intuitively, someone asking for the time is subject to different epistemic standards than a surgeon consulting a colleague before a dangerous operation. Following this line of thought, (...) this paper develops an account of testimonial justication that captures our reductionist as well as our anti-reductionist intuitions. It is argued that the speaker’s commitment to an epistemic norm, as well as the hearer’s understanding of that norm, gives the hearer a presumptive right to believe what she is told. However, this justication doesn’t apply to situations with high practical risks. Here, the hearer needs reductive reasons to believe that her interlocutor is especially qualied to give her the desired information. (shrink)

The heated debates and severe conflicts between the atomists and the anti-atomists of the latter half of the nineteenth century are well known to the historian of science. The position of Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleev towards these nineteenth century debates on atomism will be studied in this paper. A first attempt will thus be offered to reconcile Mendeleev’s seemingly contradictory comments and ambiguous standpoints into one coherent view.

In classically based modal logic, there are three common conceptions of necessity, the universal conception, the equivalence relation conception, and the axiomatic conception. They provide distinct presentations of the modal logic S5, all of which coincide in the basic modal language. We explore these different conceptions in the context of the relevant logic R, demonstrating where they come apart. This reveals that there are many options for being an S5-ish extension of R. It further reveals a divide between the universal (...) conception of necessity on the one hand, and the axiomatic conception on the other: The latter is consistent with motivations for relevant logics while the former is not. For the committed relevant logician, necessity cannot be the truth in all possible worlds. (shrink)

Classically, Christians have professed the saving efficacy of the cross. Does Karl Rahner? Recent commentary on Foundations of Christian Faith has described Rahner as conflating “atonement” generally with penal substitutionary theories of a changing God, as ruling out the redemptive significance of Christ’s death, and as denigrating the normativity of Scripture in order to do so. This article responds to these claims, unfolding Rahner’s soteriology and arguing that he advances a theology of the cross which affirms its saving efficacy, including (...) in the last decade of his work. (shrink)

This book is a new interpretation of Schelling's path-breaking 1809 treatise on freedom, the last major work published during his lifetime. The treatise is at the heart of the current Schelling renaissance—indeed, Heidegger calls it "one of the most profound works of German, thus of Western, philosophy." It is also one of the most demanding and complex texts in German Idealism. By tracing the problem of ground through Schelling's treatise, this book provides a unified reading of the text, while unlocking (...) the meaning of its most challenging passages through clear, detailed analysis. This analysis shows how Schelling's implicit distinction between senses of ground is the key to his project of constructing a system that can satisfy reason while accommodating objects that seem to defy rational explanation—including evil, the origins of nature, and absolute freedom. This allows Schelling to unite reason and mystery, providing a rich model for philosophizing about freedom and evil today. (shrink)

The writings of Simone Weil support a feminist philosophy of education that locates freedom in self-determined creative work within contexts of necessity. In particular, Weil’s discussion of Force, the Good, Work, Method and Time provide criteria for a feminist philosophy of education, in terms of educational ends and means. Philosophy for Children is relevant to each of these themes, in various ways.

Since 1976, when Thomas A. Szlezák held his inaugural lecture as a private lecturer at the University of Zurich entitled "The Dialogue Form and Esotericism: On the Interpretation of the Platonic Dialogue the Phaedrus", the now-emeritus professor at Tübingen has advocated a particular interpretation of the Platonic dialogues and especially of the Phaedrus: namely, that what is referred to in the latter dialogue—without further explanation—as "more valuable" than what is set down in writing corresponds to Plato's "so called unwritten doctrines", (...) or for Szlezák, "unwritten... (shrink)

The paper identifies some background assumptions of compositionality in formal semantics and investigates how they shape formal semantics as a scientific discipline.

In this paper it will be shown that when a conditional statement is understood or known to be true, a number of implicitly specified variables are given more or less concrete values. Each of the variables will be defined and examples will be employed to demonstrate their use in conditional evaluation. From time to time this analysis in terms of variables will be contrasted with a 'possible worlds' analysis of conditionals. The purpose of this paper is not to argue against (...) the possible worlds analysis but rather to provide an alternative to that analysis. (shrink)

The eighteenth century was the century of self-organization, but also that of materialism, inasmuch as it was then that certain thinkers proclaimed themselves to be materialists (rather than just being labelled as such by enemies of various sorts). If one seeks to read these two features – one hesitates to call them ‘facts’ or ‘events’ – together, one arrives rather quickly at an influential metaphor, the beeswarm. But a metaphor of or for what? Irreducible organic unity, most broadly – spelled (...) out in the vocabulary of the period in terms of synergy, sympathy and sensibility, but also of cohesion, consensus and conspiration: individual bees have their characteristics, their intentions, and their own purposes, but they also ‘conspire’, ‘cohere’ and ‘consent’ in the name of a larger living unity, the swarm, although this leaves open further questions such as the exact nature of the order or organization yielded or enacted by the swarm (bottom-up? top-down? emergent? etc.). The fascination with the beeswarm is a fascination with organic unity and in some cases (notably Diderot), with the organic or organismic features of living matter itself. This is the story we wish to tell. (shrink)

When one looks into the role of artificial languages in philosophy of language it seems appropriate to start with making a distinction between philosophy of language proper and formal semantics of natural language. Although the distinction between the two disciplines may not always be easy to make since there arguably exist substantial historical and systematic relationships between the two, it nevertheless pays to keep the two apart, at least initially, since the motivation commonly given for the use of artificial languages (...) in philosophy of language is often rather different from the one that drives the use of such languages in semantics. Of course, this difference in motivation should not blind us for the commonalities that exists between the two disciplines. Philosophy of language and formal semantics have a common history, and arguably also share some of their substance. Philosophy of language is by and large an outgrowth of work in the analytical tradition in philosophy in the first half of the twentieth century. Both ordinary language philosophy, with its emphasis on the description of actual language use, as well as the more logic-oriented and formally inclined school of logical positivism contributed to the definition of philosophy of language as a separate philosophical discipline, with its own set of problems and methods to solve them. Another major contributor to the establishment of philosophy of language as a distinct discipline has been modern linguistics, in particular generative grammar in the tradition of Chomsky that became the dominant paradigm in linguisticsin the fifties and sixties of the previous century. And as it happens, both the generative tradition of Chomsky and analytic philosophy in its formal and less formal guises have been important factors in the development of formal semantics as well. Thus, it should come as no surprise that the two have something in common. That the communalities go beyond a common ancestry, but are reflected in substance and methods as well, will be argued later on. However, be that as it may, it is still a good idea to keep philosophy of language and formal semantics separate, at least initially, since the role that is assigned to artificial languages and the ways in which these languages are employed in both does differ in a number of respects that are worth keeping in mind.. (shrink)

The German Act on Autonomous Driving constitutes the first national framework on level four autonomous vehicles and has received attention from policy makers, AI ethics scholars and legal experts in autonomous driving. Owing to Germany’s role as a global hub for car manufacturing, the following paper sheds light on the act’s position within the ethical discourse and how it reconfigures the balance between legislation and ethical frameworks. Specifically, in this paper, we highlight areas that need to be more worked out (...) in the future either through ethical conventions, corporate measures or legal measures and examine how the law can be incorporated into the existing discourse on the regulation of technologies. Based on this examination, we derive implications for future discourse and elaborate on companies’ responsibilities in developing autonomous driving technologies in an ethical sense. (shrink)

In the history of interpretations of Hegel, how one reads the chapter on “Absolute Knowing” in the Phenomenology of Spirit determines one’s whole perspective. In fact, Marx’s only comments on the Phenomenology concern this final chapter, taking it as the very “secret” of Hegel’s philosophy. But what is the secret hidden within the thicket of this impenetrable prose? My suggestion is that it turns on a very specific meaning of the “abolition of time” that Hegel describes in the very last (...) paragraphs. But the meaning of this idea is not what Marx criticized in his last Manuscript of 1844, that is, it is not simply a form of idealism which abolishes the finitude of man. Rather this relationship to time accepts such finitude, making it the central axis upon which the possibility of freedom turns. In this paper, I will present a reading of “Absolute Knowing” that focuses on the meaning of overcoming time, and connect it to some thoughts on “disposable time” that Marx discusses in the Grundrisse. (shrink)

This essay proposes a new way to read José Martí's idea of "Nuestra América," one that focuses on the mode of the call for unity toward liberation and decoloniality. In particular, I offer the arguments for this Latin American unity that would define a collective form of resistance against our colonial past and present (Europe) and an imperialist future (USA). It can be argued that it is extremely difficult to translate the Cuban author's thought by itself to our contemporary struggles, (...) and that this notion runs the risk of being an outdated, naïve, and even detrimental reduction of a too complex racial reality. In this essay, I defend a way in which this notion is still relevant today by alluding to the mode of a decolonial return to one's own land in the works of Édouard Glissant and Gloria Anzaldúa. In these two authors I see elements of the criticism of a colonial rootedness and filiation, linking a decolonial attitude toward the land with a particular way of returning to it: one that challenges a mythical, pure territorial space, and also reimagines the temporality of the return by focusing on the present. With the help of this novel gesture of returning to the land, I argue that Martí's nuestra América voices a call for unity and independence that still has value beyond its undeniable shortcomings. (shrink)

Recent research into the nature of self in artificial and biological systems raises interest in a uniquely determining immutable sense of self, a “metaphysical ‘I’” associated with inviolable personal values and moral convictions that remain constant in the face of environmental change, distinguished from an object “me” that changes with its environment. Complementary research portrays processes associated with self as multimodal routines selectively enacted on the basis of contextual cues informing predictive self or world models, with the notion of the (...) constant, per-vasive and invariant sense of self associated with a multistable attractor set aiming to ensure personal integrity against threat of disintegrative change. This paper proposes that an immutable sense of self emerges as a global attractor which can be described as a project ideal self-situation embodied in frontal medial processes during more or less normal adolescent development, and that thereafter serves to orient agency in the more or less free development of embodied potentials over the life course in effort to realize project conditions, phenomenally identified with the felt pull towards this end as purpose of and source of meaning in life. So oriented, life-long self-development aims to embody solutions to problems at different timescales depending on this embodied purpose, ultimately in the service of evolutionary processes securing organism populations against threats of disintegrative change over timespans far beyond that of the individual. After characterizing the target sense of self, research circling this target is briefly surveyed. Self as global project and developmental neural correlates are proposed. Then, the paper discusses some implications for research in biological and artificial systems. Building from earlier work in cognitive neurorobotics, discussion affirms the value of reinforcement rituals including prayer in metaphysical self-development, considers implications for value alignment and rights associated with free will in the context of artificial intelligence and robot religion, and concludes by emphasizing the importance of self-development toward project ideals as source of meaning in life in the current social-political environment. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMohan Matthen's ‘The Pleasure of Art’ considers a rich variety of psychological phenomena surrounding our experience of pleasure in aesthetic appreciation. I explain many of these phenomena in terms of desire. Often my explanations support and complement Matthen's account; but sometimes I account for the same phenomena in terms of different causal structures than he invokes, seeking a more unified psychological theory.

Our concern in the following pages will be the ontology of the relation between living beings (especially, but not exclusively, humans) and the technological artefacts of our late-industrial society. The theme is not new, but important in the context of the emergence and globalisation of so called “post- modern” society. The eventual originality of the present contribution is to be situated in its interpretative framework, i.e., a specific conception of reality's deep ontology, overlooked in general exactly because of the “technological” (...) structure impressed since centuries upon our ways of perceiving of and reasoning about the world. I refer to this neglected but fundamental characteristic of reality as its ontological paradoxicality. (shrink)

This paper presents a model-theoretic semantics for discourse "about" natural numbers, one that captures what I call "the mathematical-object picture", but avoids what I can "the mathematical-object theory".

The Pyrrhonian skeptic’s stance, as described by Sextus Empiricus, is in good part defined by his suspending judgment or belief about all the matters he has so far investigated. Most interpreters of Pyrrhonism maintain that it is a mistake to understand this form of skepticism in terms of doubt because suspension as conceived of by the Pyrrhonist is markedly different from the state of doubt. In this article, I expound the reasons that have been offered in support of that prevailing (...) view and assess their strength. (shrink)

Does “The Colbert Report” promote democratic values in American political dialogue? If so, does it encourage substantive criticism of political orthodoxy? Or does it just encourage the politics of cynicism, like so many other cable news shows? We claim that Stephen Colbert's style of political satire promotes democratic values of free, open, and critical speech because it reflects an ethical commitment that evokes the earlier spirit of criticism embodied by the ancient Greek philosophical tradition of _parrhesia_, or "speaking the truth" (...) fearlessly in public. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper, I pursue the question whether extending democratic rights to work is good in the broadest possible sense of that term: good for workers, firms, market economies, and democratic states. The argument makes two assumptions in a broadly consequentialist framework. First, the configuration of any relationship among persons in which there is less rather than more coercion makes individuals better off. Second, extending democratic rights to work will entail costs and benefits to both the power and authority (...) of employers and meaningful work for employees. These costs and benefits cannot be determined in advance because they are largely empirical, but there are still good reasons for expanding worker participation all-things-considered. First, I examine the parallel case for extending democratic rights to the workplace based on several similarities between politics and work organization. In addition, I consider the objections from voluntariness and efficiency. Although both objections raise interesting problems I believe that a properly formulated conception of democratic workplaces can answer them. In the final section, I sketch a minimal conception of these rights at the level of the firm that does not require a large-scale transformation of the market economy. (shrink)

Arguably, the original conception of epistemic justification comes from Descartes and Locke, who thought of justification deontologically. Moreover, their deontological conception was especially strict: there are no excuses for unjustified beliefs. Call this the “classical deontologist” conception of justification. As the original conception, we ought to accept it unless proven untenable. Nowadays, however, most have abandoned classical deontologism as precisely that—untenable. It stands accused of requiring doxastic voluntarism and normative transparency. My goal is to rescue classical deontologism from these accusations. (...) I show how, given a specific form of internalism coupled with a plausible theory of epistemic blame, we can be blameworthy for all of our (non-exempt) unjustified beliefs without transparency or voluntarism. The result is that the classical deontological conception of justification should regain its privileged status. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to show that a certain form of immortality, without the need for any intervention from a supernatural being, is almost inevitable for human beings. I take a physicalist starting point: I am a certain configuration of physical particles. Thus, if these particles were reassembled in the same configuration, I would necessarily come back into existence. I address a number of objections raised against this prospect by Eric T. Olson, who argues that the reassembly of such (...) particles following their dispersal after death would be simply impossible, and that if it did occur, it would necessarily be a mere replica rather than the real ‘me’. I suggest that the random redistribution of particles can be thought of as the throw of cosmic ‘dice’. With any specific throw, the likelihood that it yields the particular configuration that constitutes ‘me’ is vanishingly small. But over infinite spans of time, this likelihood increases until it becomes a near certainty. I show that even if this reconfiguration lacks the same causal features as those that gave rise to the original me, this cannot imply that the reassembled me is a mere replica. I acknowledge that my conjectured form of immortality may be unappealing to theists and non-theists alike. I also note that it rests on a linear conception of time, which may not harmonise with current thinking in physics. However, these issues notwithstanding, my conjectured version of immortality is at least as inexorable as many other things we take for granted, which also rest on potentially flawed beliefs about the nature of time and space. (shrink)

This paper makes an effort to interpret the relationship between the concepts "Zuhandenheit" (readiness-to-hand) and "Vorhandenheit" (presence-at-hand), as they are analysed in §§ 15-16 of Heidegger's "Being and Time". These concepts are two modes of existence of the beings met in our surrounding world. So, they don't concern different things. Heidegger doesn't give the title "things" to the beings ready-to-hand; he names them "equipments" (Zeug). It's a concept relative to the Aristotelian "organon", which Aristotle exemplifies with the human hand as (...) a primary equipment. But Zuhandenheit isn't a quality of the things; the term has to do with the secret character of the equipments as the maining way of their disclosure. It's the Being-in-itself of the equipments, as long as they are useful. This Being-in-itself has nothing common with the Kantian Ding an sich, which is based on the presupposition of a cognitive relationship between subject and object. I posit also the question, whether Zuhandenheit can rendet the secretness and familiarity of our immediate approach to the environment, and my answer to this question is negative. (shrink)

The paper addresses some of the aspects of the neo-Aristotelian concept of good on the basis of Martha Nussbaum’s capabilities approach. The author’s general thesis is that the idea of good organizes its normativity along two vectors pointed towards nature and emancipation, which are interlinked, that is — the normativity of the good is always organized by both of them and it is inappropriate to refer to one of them only. This fault is made, the author believes, by Nussbaum who (...) does not offer enough resources to establish a sound naturalistic evaluative standard in her theory. To address this issue the author starts by discussing the capabilities approach as a form of the concept of good and proceeds by analysing Nussbaum’s view on family as an exemplar of the inadequacies of the approach. (shrink)